Quote:
Originally Posted by LiteraryLark
This is exactly what I'm worried about. My grandparents always say you'll end up in a hole you can't get out from. I just need sustainable income while I go through beauty school. Obviously, from what I've heard from, you can't work or go to school on disability, because if you need it you wouldn't be capable of working, but SSI? I know very little about it, and it may be just enough to get me through beauty school. But I won't know until I go in and talk with them. I really don't want to live off the government, but if I am entitled to it, it's worth a shot and it's only temporary, right?
I just need to weigh my options. I don't need to make a decision right this second.
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Disability (or SSDI) is for people who have been working for a lot of their life and became disabled. It works off money that have locked into social security combined with the standard SSI payment amount.
If you are only 24 then you will most likely only qualify for SSI which pays around $730 a month and limits your options greatly. While the application is in process, expect to wait many months or even years and be forced to put your life entirely on hold for them. If you are working or receive any type of unemployment you had better get off now or they will decline you. Also, if you do get approved you can only make a certain amount on top of what the already small payments pay (I think it's somewhere between $200-300 a month) and they won't allow you to save up more than 2 grand in the bank.
I speak from experience because I attempted an application for myself awhile back without help from a lawyer and my uncle is on it and he is in his 50s, yet, unable to afford all his living expenses so he would always leach off other people, and my uncle used to be financially well off before the recession hit as a self employed auto mechanic. I used to hate him but my own negative experience with the whole screwed up system has caused me to gain a bit more empathy.
To make a long story short they punish those of us who want to be self reliant and are trying to work on our problems, yet they have no issues helping those who simply do not care and have given up; something that I have a serious problem with.